Mooooooore skeptism

[withfangs.livejournal.com]

Please bear with me. My boy, Max, posted here a while ago, in regards to me, and he's trying to push me more into having conversations with others about my own doubts with multiplicity.

When I was young, I began studying other religions, and I really became interested in spirituallity. Along the way, I discovered two others living within. Really, this is just background information, so no know thinks I'm trying to troll or rag on the community. I've been aware of my own multiplicity for a number of years. I also see my multiplicity as a means to my own personal spirituallity. That is, I don't have a set religion, but I see the presence of and communication with my system as being a self-enlightening, holy experience.

I see this huge resurgance of multiples on the internet, and it makes me skeptical. NOT, because of the fact that their multiples. I wouldn't call someone out on being a "fake". But, the way some of these systems carry on, it makes me wonder how they can reasonably function.

I'm going to point the finger at soulbonding, because it seems to be the means of multiplicity that houses the greatest number of loonies. I can accept, per se, that another has entered your system, and is a bad influence, and perhaps is forcing your body and system down a bad path. I can not, however, accept that this entity causing harm is, say, Sephiroth from the Final Fantasy games. That, is insane. Final Fantasy is fiction. It may very well be an entity that projects images OF Sephiroth into your mind, but part of gaining some feasible aspect of functional control over yourselves, is seeing through the bullshit.

I have trouble with people who play INTO that bullshit, by extension. Not only do they seem to be the loudest group of loons, but they're also impossible to have a reasonable discussion with. Everything boils down to "it's different for everyone", which is great for upholding any kind of deluded fantasy that you might have, but really, isn't productive for conversation.

Especially...if you're attempting to learn something, or see if they have a reason to act the way that they do.

Are there any rational, sane soulbonds, here? If so, do they honestly believe that they're fictional characters? This seems to be the most levelheaded community about plurality on LJ that we can find, so I figure it would be the best place to start.

On Names, Identities, and Soulbonding.

[our-haven.livejournal.com]

So there's an interesting subject I've been tossing around in my mind for a while, and that's the names and physical charactaristics of the people in our house. It seems to me that while some of us have had sort-of 'innate' names, many have actually chosen their name when they first show-up 'publicly'. They've always been the same person, from before emergence to present day, but it just seems like most of them they didn't need conventional characteristics (such as names and physical appearance) until they were in the 'context' of this life and world. It also seems to me that, when choosing a name, everyone has a 'concept' or 'tone' related to their personality that they try to express. You know how certain types of names just fit certain people?

Some examples from our own system:

-Ana showed up without provocation and without any notice-- or warning, more appropriately. She started 'pushing' different ideas on us non-verbally, then started whispering, then started fully ordering us around. She just is, and has always been, her.
-Raijna was a walk-in (a rain fae) and had no concept of names or most things relating to our form of life. Jeremey chose a name for her, after getting inspiration from the fae herself, and when he ran it by her she seemed happy with the choice so we kept it.
-Jessa 'latched onto' a couple different people, including Raijna and myself, when she first showed up. She's always been the same girl, but she started out by co-fronting with us, following us around, and trying to act like us. Generally acting like a kid. It was damn cute, really. After she gave up "Raijy" and "Jemmy", I helped her choose her own name; "Jessamine".
-January and I are the result of the split of Genevieve. I fell back on our old nick-name, Jem, and January chose hers because of how close "Genevieve" is in pronounciation to the French word for january, "janvier". She said it suited her emotions and life, dead and cold like the winter (her attitude's not so goth anymore, thank god.)
-Vivian only recently emerged 'publicly', the first times she fronted I got a couple hints of her personality and the 'feel' of a 'v-name.' She confirmed my first impression of her by choosing "Vanessa" her third time out, but just today changing her name to "Vivian" because it is, in her opinion, a stronger name (meaning 'alive' or 'living') than "Vanessa" (meaning 'butterfly'.)

I really got to thinking about this because of reading about soulbonding. It seems, from what I've read recently, many people's soulbonds represent themselves with the character/person they do because it is similar to their personality and how they wanted to present/express themselves. I guess I see a similarity there, though perhaps on a different scale. Maybe soulbonds present themselves how they do because they didn't always have the 'context' of this life and world to fit into? How similar to or different from multiplicity like mine is this, aside from how soulbonds take on pre-existing fictional characters or already-living people? Are soulbonds actually constructs instead of pre-existing entities?

Food for thought.

~Jem of Haven
(btw, I tried to lj-cut this and it went funky and refused to work. sorry about the length)

Tossing out food for thought: What's a soulbond?

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Looking at the two threads started earlier today, it's occurred to me that there may be a problem with people using different definitions of the same word. Understand that I'm not trying to fan the flames or incite argument here; I'm bringing this up because it's a personal curiosity of mine, and because I think that misunderstanding is often the result of people making assumptions about others' experiences and assuming that others define certain words/concepts in the same way as them. (I'll answer this myself, eventually-- I just want to see first what others have to say about it.)

1) What do you consider a soulbond to be? Do you base this definition on your personal experiences, on what you've heard from others, or a combination thereof?

2) Do you believe the word 'soulbond' is useful and/or accurate, or that it's necessary to make a distinction between soulbonds and anyone else in the system? Do you think it's important or helpful to assign different terms to people who were created or arrived via different ways, or do you think it's unneccessarily divisive and creates the appearance of difference when little difference exists?